Monday, September 25, 2017

How next year won’t be like this year: “I think we’re going to see a younger team. We’ve got arguably the best prospect in the game (outfielder Ronald Acuna) pushing his way up to Atlanta. He’s going to be given every opportunity in spring training. When he’s ready, nobody’s going to stand in his way. I said the same thing about Ozzie Albies this spring, and it’s the same way. You saw where we moved Brandon Phillips to third base. We will move other people to make way for this young player because he is that special.”

Reader Comments and Retorts

Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.

I'm not sure there's much point in pointing fingers at anybody yet. They're on pace for about 72-75 wins which, as teardowns go, is far from painful. They may make it through without a 100-loss season.

It's often the case in a teardown that the ML roster is not full of the promising young players. Most of the top Braves prospects were in A-ball when this all started. Albies is still just 20. You've got to field a team and you're not gonna jump guys from A-ball. Especially this year the FO seems to have done a solid job -- Flowers, Phillips, Kemp, Markakis, Adams, Suzuki, Dickey, Garcia, some old guys in the bullpen have done exactly what they were supposed to do (not suck, stay healthy). Colon (for them) and Johnson didn't work out.

Young pitchers are young pitchers. Folty, Newcomb and some others were reasonably-rated prospects but not top guys. It takes time -- their main issue seems to be walks which is pretty common for young pitchers.

If you're going to point a finger on Swanson it pretty clearly needs to be pointed at Snitker. That remains an excellent trade for the Braves even if Swanson is never any good.

Seems to me they're right where you'd want them to be. They've got a few prospects up but still have 8 in the top 100 (6 pitchers) plus Freeman, Inciarte and Teheran still with several years of control left. They're not likely to do much next year but 2019 should show some progress.